I think it depends on the educational system you have access to. I went to university in England, and the bachelor's degrees are 3 years long, and completely do

I think it depends on the educational system you have access to. I went to university in England, and the bachelor's degrees are 3 years long, and completely domain focused e.g you just learn computer science. So the MS degrees in that country in that country expects that material as prior knowledge. In the US, bachelor's degrees are four years, and also include "general education" requirements. So in England, they would often expect you to do a 2nd bachelor's before doing a masters degree, whereas in the US, it would be a waste of time for you to do a second bachelor's, so instead they tend to give you "conditional" admission to the masters, but expect you to complete undergraduate (bachelor's level) CS courses before proceeding to the MS level courses. The bachelor's level courses don't "count" towards your MS, but you still have to complete them before you can start or complete the MS courses. It sounds like you do have the opportunity to go work as a software engineer, but the pay seems too low to you. Instead, think of it like a university where they pay you :) As another person commented, the real value is the industry experience that you get, the (low) pay is just a bonus, so take it unless you actually can't survive on that for a year or so. Even 1 year of low paid industry experience will be more valuable to you than a BS + MS in computer science in the short term. In the long-term, the skills you learn in an CS degree can be useful, but they get more useful the further along you go in your career, so better to learn them part-time as you proceed in your career.